Life In 19x19

I've been interested in organizing tournaments for schools and was wondering:
What are your thoughts for rules Go tournaments for schools?
Does a team tournament work such as in HnG? If there was a team tournament, how could it be AGA rated?
What pairing system works best? (AGA manual says that swiss is a must-learn pairing system)
Also is it better to have a general scholastic tournament (for elementary to college students--i think that's what chess does) or organize tournaments for a specific age group e.g. high school students?

Team tournaments are (I think) only interesting if the teammembers have something in common and all teams are all (at least in theory) the same strenght of the same age)

So if it is schools against eachother (like in HNG) then i think it is ok.

If you first have to decide who are in which team then not.


Depending on the number of teams or people swiss or roundrobin is possible

I would organise it in [sl=RoundRobin]Round Robin[/sl] tournaments per age group.


Do contact the [sl=AmericanGoFoundation]American Go Foundation[/sl] http://agfgo.org/index.html maybe they can give you more advice

dtslife wrote:What are your thoughts for rules Go tournaments for schools?

Same as any other tournament. AGA rules work well enough. Make sure first-timers know that there are no undos and that they can operate the clocks.

dtslife wrote:Does a team tournament work such as in HnG? If there was a team tournament, how could it be AGA rated?

An event can be rated as long as everyone is an AGA member and the event is played face-to-face.

dtslife wrote:What pairing system works best? (AGA manual says that swiss is a must-learn pairing system)

An elimination match would also work if you have an appropriate number of teams.

dtslife wrote:Also is it better to have a general scholastic tournament (for elementary to college students--i think that's what chess does) or organize tournaments for a specific age group e.g. high school students?

I think it will depend on what kind of registration you are expecting.

You can take a look at what the American Go Honor Society is doing.

http://aghs.cc/about_us/about_us.html

thanks for the quick responses!

speaking to the aghs is a great idea that I have forgot of. They use an uncommon korean point system to rate teams. as a participant in their annual school championship, I am somewhat encouraged to play by the fact that there are consolation prizes just for participating. the point system they used uncommon.

in terms of convenience, how easy is it to pair an odd number of players. which system is easiest.

my parameters for a tournament i have in mind:
4-5 hours 1 day tournament. (30minutes to an hour for awards)
i prefer it be competitive (a team tournament might not work so well, but ideally that is what i'm hoping for)

the idea of team tournament vs. individual tournament has raised the question:
What happens if a player has to leave? How does it affect the team's rating.

are handicap games AGA rated?
this is what i found published in May 1992. I'm not sure if it is still up to date.

Question 2: How are handicap games handled by the rating system?
Handicap games play an important role in the rating system, as they help make
the network of comparisons between players more complete. Our expectation
that a player will win or lose against another player is based on the difference in
their rated strengths adjusted for any handicap given. The adjustment is 50
points for a one stone handicap (black, no komi), n x 100 for an n-stone handicap
(n from 2 to 9). Research continues to refine "the value of a handicap stone".

http://www.usgo.org/ratings/downloads/ratingquestions.pdf

also can you guys comment on which TD program is easiest to use?
i have found
MGA TD
Agatha TD
pyTD
winTD

@willemien: Is it possible to make a round robin tournament a 4-5 hour tournament with players? If so can you give a hypothetical example. the thing i dislike about RR is that n-1 rounds are required and there is no assurance that there will just be the right number of teams/players for each division.

i'll try to read the resources on the AGA website and do some testing and post back findings.

Handicap games are rated. Definitive rating information can be found at http://www.usgo.org/ratings. It was completely accurate as of August and I don't think anything has changed. The page also has a link to a provisional ratings calculator, which you can use to give players fairly accurate ratings at the end of the tournament.

If a player leaves in a team tournament then it means one of the boards becomes either a tie or a forfeit. If it's an individual competition it just means that the player isn't paired.

With a field of 4-5 teams you're looking at a tournament with ~3 rounds. If you have more than 8 players or teams you'll need to break up the field into divisions to ensure unique winners, or else just award prizes to people/teams who scored 3 wins. Look at a Baltimore-8 format; it may be useful.

As far as programs go, download them and try them out. I think AGATHA is Australian, which means it won't produce AGA ratings files. Don't know anything about MGA TD or winTD. pyTD had troubles assigning handicaps the last I checked, but I'm sure it's been improved since then. If you aren't worried about generating an AGA ratings report (or getting provisional ratings) then you can also look at OpenGotha.

dtslife wrote:thanks for the quick responses!


@willemien: Is it possible to make a round robin tournament a 4-5 hour tournament with players? If so can you give a hypothetical example. the thing i dislike about RR is that n-1 rounds are required and there is no assurance that there will just be the right number of teams/players for each division.

There is a problem if you only want to press the tournament in 4-5 hour.
How many rounds do you want to have?
and what thinking time / time syatem?

U